Monthly Archives: March 2010

Here’s an astonished Andrew Breitbart explaining to an officer what happened outside of Searchlight, after Harry Reid’s astroturfers called the police claiming he (not them!) threw eggs on the Tea Party bus.

Like this:

I thought their long, national nightmare was over, butMary O’Grady, who has been reporting on the Honduran crisis since the very beginning, says the Obama administration continues to meddle in Honduran affairs, and align itself with the region’s Chavistas.

Last year, the U.S. tried to force the reinstatement of deposed president Manuel Zelaya. When that failed and Team Obama was looking like the Keystone Cops, it sent a delegation to Tegucigalpa to negotiate a compromise.

Participants in those talks say Dan Restrepo, senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs at the National Security Council, let slip that the U.S. interest had to do with American politics. The Republicans, he said, were using the administration’s support for Mr. Zelaya, an ally of Venezuelan Hugo Chávez, against the Democrats. It’s not going to work, Mr. Restrepo is said to have informed the other negotiators, because “we have the power” and would be keeping it for a long time.

Um? Could the Obama administration really be so petty as to punish an entire nation because the Republicans had taken up their cause?

It can’t have been comforting for Hondurans to learn that while their country was living a monumental crisis, fueled by U.S. policy, Mr. Restrepo’s concern was his party’s power. For the record, an NSC spokesman says “Mr. Restrepo didn’t say that.” But my sources are more plausible considering what has transpired since.

Four months after a presidential election, reports from Honduras suggest the Obama administration remains obsessed with repairing its foreign-policy image by regaining the upper hand. The display of raw colonialist hubris is so pronounced that locals now refer to U.S. ambassador Hugo Llorens as “the proconsul.”

Washington’s bullying is two-pronged. First is a maniacal determination to punish those involved in removing Mr. Zelaya. Second is an attempt to force Honduras to allow Mr. Zelaya, who now lives in the Dominican Republic, to return without facing any repercussions for the illegal actions that provoked his removal. Both goals are damaging the bilateral relationship, polarizing the nation and raising the risk of a resurgence of political violence.

It’s hard to imagine what the U.S. thinks it achieves with a policy that divides Hondurans while strengthening the hand of a chavista. Revenge and power come to mind. Whatever it is, it can’t be good for U.S. national security interests.

I was disgusted by Obama’s sting of apologies to foreign nations last year but the fact is the next president is going to have issue quite a few apologies for the behavior of this disgusting administration.

Via Cold Fury, Michael Barone struggles to answer that question in his latest piece: Friend of the Enemy, where he sums up Obama’s foreign policy, as: attack America’s friends and kowtow to our enemies:

Examples run from Britain to Israel. Early in his administration, Obama returned a bust of Churchill that the British government had loaned the White House after 9/11. Then Obama gave Prime Minister Gordon Brown a set of DVDs that don’t work on British machines and that Brown, who has impaired vision, would have trouble watching anyway.

More recently, Obama summoned Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House, permitted no photographs, laid down nonnegotiable demands, and went off to dinner.

***

Perhaps like Barack Obama Sr., he regards the British as evil colonialists. Or perhaps like his preacher for 20 years, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, he regards Israel as an evil oppressor.

But the list of American friends Obama has slighted is long. It includes Poland and the Czech Republic (anti-missile program canceled), Honduras (backing the constitutionally ousted president), Georgia (no support against Russia), and Colombia and South Korea (no action on pending free-trade agreements).

In the meantime, Obama sends yearly greetings to (as he puts it) the Islamic Republic of Iran, exchanges friendly greetings with Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, caves to Russian demands on arms control, and sends a new ambassador to Syria.

What we’re seeing, I think, is a president who shares a view, long held by some on the American left, that the real danger to America often comes from America’s allies.

Like this:

As you can see – at least “dozens of people” were flowing into the small town, many having to get out and walk for miles to get there:

Video sent by Infidel Joe:

This video shows traffic flowing south on Nevada State Route 95 leading from Las Vegas to Searchlight. Some of the backup is due to the traffic trying to enter the rally site, but a lot of it consists of people trying to get to the site.

We got one report that a group from Bullhead City, Arizona had to walk 4.5 miles from where their bus had to park. Many probably chose to pass on by realizing there was no place to park.

There is no question that this rally would have been much, much larger had sufficient parking been available.

What happened to cause this amazing turn around? Did Harry Reid have a change of heart? Does he feel bad about his past behavior and comments? Or is he perhaps trying to be magnanimous in victory (of Obamacare)…

Like this:

High drama seems to follow Andrew Breitbart wherever he goes. It’s a good thing the cameras were rolling.

I’m told that Breitbart wants this story out on all the blogs since the MSM will ignore it. Like they ignore all other instances of left wing violence, because it doesn’t fit their narrative. Well, it’s time to start hitting them back.

I hope that those Democratic politicians and media figures who have incited this sort of violence against the tea parties with their extremist rhetoric will try to rein in their violent followers before their violent rhetoric produces still more political violence.

And as I mentioned in an earlier post- Friendly media types, like any of the anchors on Fox (with the exception of Geraldo, I guess) need to challenge these reports of tea party racism, and violence, instead of assuming there must be some truth to it. No there must not be any truth to it. Alinsky Democrats have no respect for the truth, and the sooner decent people understand that, the better.

Victor Davis Hanson hit the nail on the head when he described the leader of the Alinsky Dems, thus:

All politicians fudge on their promises. But this president manages to transcend the normal political exaggeration and dissimulation. Whereas past executives shaded the truth, Barack Obama trumps that: on almost every key issue, what Obama says he will do, and what he says is true, is a clear guide to what he will not do, and what is not true. It is as if “truth” is a mere problem of lesser mortals.

That’s how they all feel, but most aren’t as brazen as dear leader is about it.

Democrats can’t stand to have their precious economy-destroying healthcare program criticized in its very first week, so they’ve announced an “investigation” into the claims. Late yesterday, the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation sent letters to the CEOs of AT&T, Caterpillar, Deere & Co, and Verizon asking them to appear for a hearing on their claims. In the letters, Waxman and Stupak ask for company documents including accounting analyses and the internal emails of all “senior company officials” related to the projected costs of ObamaCare. How serious are they? The letter actually defines “senior company officials.”

People’s Commissar Henry Waxman is now planning to haul the companies before his committee because their disclosures fail to play along with the our Leftist rulers’ script that

Obamacare “will expand coverage and bring down costs.”

As the Journal’s editors observe:

“Black-letter financial accounting rules require that corporations immediately restate their earnings to reflect the present value of their long-term health liabilities, including a higher tax burden. Should these companies have played chicken with the Securities and Exchange Commission to avoid this politically inconvenient reality? Democrats don’t like what their bill is doing in the real world, so they now want to intimidate CEOs into keeping quiet.”

If we are now under a system where disclosure gets you a public whipping and other threats by the Powers That Be while nondisclosure promises the ruinous expenses of defending against criminal investigations and civil enforcement, this is no longer anything but a thugocracy.

On Friday White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and Obama senior advisor Valerie Jarrett were calling the CEOs and Washington office heads of the companies that took the financial hits and attacked them for doing so. One Washington office head said that the White House calls were accusatory and “downright rude.”

Ace correctly notes:

A year ago, Obama threatened to call out executives who kicked up a fuss over his policies. But he had a hell of a lot more political juice, then. I don’t think CEOs are particularly frightened now at being called out by an unpopular president.

Confronting the head of a non-TARP fund holding Chrysler debt and unwilling to release it for any sum less than that to which it was legally entitled without compelling cause, this country’s “Car Czar” berated the manager of said fund with an outburst of prose substantially resembling this:

Who the f*** do you think you’re dealing with? We’ll have the IRS audit your fund. Every one of your employees. Your investors. Then we will have the Securities and Exchange Commission rip through your books looking for anything and everything and nothing we find to destroy you with.

CNN’s Fredericka Whitfield wasn’t quite prepared to give the rally credit it was due as far as participation. She estimated that hundreds, but if not, “at least dozens of people” were in attendance.

“Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin there in Searchlight, Nev., was the backyard of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, but today it’s the backdrop of this Tea Party Express – making a stop here,” Whitfield said. “Hundreds of people, at least dozens of people – we haven’t gotten a count of how many people turned out there. We heard Sarah Palin talk about everything about the campaign, to unseat Sen. Reid to what she calls ObamaCare, on the heels of that health care vote and even talking about her definition of her love of America.”

By the time Sarah Palin had spoken, the crowd had swollen to the size you see in the pictures. This woman is either grossly incompetent at estimating crowds, or was being blatantly dishonest.

Members of the press corps estimated the crowd size between 9,000 – 14,000 but the security and crowd control firm working the event estimated 30,000+.

Representatives from the security firm indicated they would be happy to confirm their estimates with interested members of the press, and based their estimates on their history of crowd control for other such public events.